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"It was the three-dimensional appearance of them," she reminisces now. "I had always painted, making murals with Pennsylvania Dutch designs, and decorating toleware and other antiques. But, in ordinary painting, the colors are flat. Of course you can get a three-dimensional effect by shading, but the finished picture or design is still two-dimensional to the touch."

She picked up a black sweater which had a felt design of many colored flowers splashed across the front of it. "You can paint with bits of felt, too," she said, running her fingers over the raised bouquet, "and it's more satisfying—at least to me."

We were standing in one room of Betty's Gift Shop, which is on the second floor of her father's hotel at Cherryville, and when I glanced around at the apparently endless variety of items Betty has made and is still making out of felt, I could hardly believe that this ordinary material could be used in so many astonishing ways. There were sweaters, purses, belts, earrings, hats, slippers and pin cushions of all kinds and shapes.

"There is a satisfaction in working with felt," Betty said, following my glance, "that I have never found in anything else. There is a 'feel' to it that I love, and anything made out of it, or decorated with it, has a richness that I don't think can be duplicated with any other material."

What is more, the beautiful things she is continuing to make out of felt have made her gift shop in the village of Cherryville, a kind of Mecca for art lovers in the four surrounding counties.

SINCE SHE was a child Betty Seidel has been interested in art work and hand craft. But most of all, in her younger days, she liked to paint.

"Anything that stood still long enough, or that she could catch, Betty would paint," her father says proudly. And he should be proud of her. Mr. Seidel bought the Cherryville Hotel when Betty was a little girl. It was just an ordinary hotel then, like hundreds of others throughout the rural section of Pennsylvania. It was an ordinary hotel. But not any more. Betty Seidel has seen to that. When she ran out of things to decorate, Betty started on the interior of the hotel itself. Every room and every piece of furniture in them was painted by Betty in the gay colors so loved by the Pennsylvania Dutch people. It took her years to do it, but as room after room was finished, people heard about them and came to see them. They told others about Betty, and thus began a parade of tourists and visitors from the larger towns surrounding Cherryville, and eventually people from every state in the union visited the little country hotel. As Mr. Seidel says: "It certainly changed my hotel business!"

Betty's Gift Shop was started accidentally when people who came to see the decorated hotel began buying the small, painted pieces of old tinware—called toleware in Pennsylvania—that Betty had placed around the rooms. As time went on and more people who were interested in hand craft discovered the place, they began to bring their handmade items to Betty to be displayed and sold in her shop.

The shop was just one room in the building then. But that was before Betty saw the pile of felt remnants and fell in love with felt working. Now the gift shop occupies six rooms on the second floor—the rooms that usually would have been rented to overnight guests in the old days—and the remainder of the hotel is simply a setting for them. The bar is open, and sandwiches are served to the people who travel great distances to Cherryville, and to the Betty Seidel Studio.

"But I owe it all to my felt things," Betty says frankly. "There are so many, many different things you can make—either entirely out of felt, or can decorate with felt—and, it seems, the more you make the more ideas you get for making more things. Well, the more things I made the more I sold, and the more I sold the more I made!"

FELT IS a cloth made either entirely of wool, or made of a combination of wool and fur or other hair. The difference between felt and any other cloth is that felt, instead of being made, by weaving, is manufactured by matting the fibers together, usually under pressure.

Felt, of course, comes in many grades. The best, made of 100 per cent wool, is the most expensive. But it is the easiest to work with and, in the long run—if what you are going to make out of it is to be for sale—it is the most economical. As the percentage of wool in felt decreases the material becomes more coarse, until at last you reach a type of felt used mostly for lamp bases, linings for cases and other items where the grade of felt isn't important.

"The finer felt comes in the most shades and grades of colors, too," Betty explains. "I work with about twenty different colors, but there are many, many more."

There are several ways to apply a design of felt to an object like a bag, belt or sweater. But first the design itself—if it is a type of design like a flower, where the various pieces are superimposed on one another—must first be made. There are three very common and well-used ways of making a design of that kind, where a number of pieces are to be attached to one another before being permanently affixed to a base material. For example: in making an ordinary flower design the petals of the flower could be glued to each other, using a felt paste, and then these petals could be glued to the leaves. Then the entire flower, petals and leaves, could be glued to the piece being decorated. Another way is to stitch, from below (so that the stitch doesn't show through the top of the piece) each petal to the other; then the petals are stitched in the same way to the leaves, and the whole flower stitched to the base. In using this method, the stitch from below, and usually just one or two stitches, is made at the center of the piece. In this way the entire flower, with no stitches showing—and with the edges of the piece free—gives a life-like, three-dimensional effect. This method, using stitches, is called applique. Another form of applique is to attach the pieces to one another with the stitches showing. These stitches, made around the edges of the pieces, and made with a running stitch on large pieces, and made with a fine, tight stitch on smaller pieces, if made with thin silk thread, of a contrasting color to the piece being stitched, are very striking.

"I use silk embroidery thread for the fine stitches and wool yarn with a needle for the coarse stitches," Betty says. "And I use thread and wool stitches in other ways, too. For example, in shading the leaves of a flower. If the leaf is made with one solid color of felt, the veins can be stitched on the leaf in a lighter or darker shade. Also various degrees of the same color can be stitched on the petals of flowers to get the effect of shading. What I mean is, if the petals of the flower you are making are blue, then darker shades of blue thread stitched around the edges of them will make them seem more real."

Outside of the felt itself there are very few tools and materials needed to make almost anything either entirely out of felt, or in decorating other materials with felt. You should have some good white cardboard for pattern cutting, chalk (to outline the patterns on the felt), scissors, felt paste, and needles with colored embroidery thread and colored wool yarn.

TO SHOW how easy it is to make an object entirely out of felt, let's follow step by step, as Betty Seidel makes a simple pincushion.

Because this pincushion will be square, the first step will be to cut two pieces of felt, selecting the same color for both pieces or, if you wish, two different colors, one for the top and one for the bottom. The design will be placed on the piece selected for the top of the pincushion, either with felt paste or by appliqueing or stitching. Now here is where the white cardboard is used. The size of the two pieces of felt that are to be used for the top and bottom of the cushion is drawn on a piece of white cardboard. The cardboard is cut along these lines, and the result is a simple pattern. Then this pattern is put on a piece of felt and outlined in white chalk; the felt is then cut along the chalk lines.

The same procedure is followed when making the patterns for whatever design you have decided to use as a decoration on the top of the pincushion. (Tracing designs on felt by means of carbon paper doesn't work. The lines simply do not show up.) Outside of the pattern for the over-all base—like a pincushion or belt, etc.—(assuming the object you are making is to be entirely out of felt) the pattern for the design will usually be a series of small patterns. For example, if the design is to be a flower of some kind, you will make a pattern for each leaf and for each petal and for the stem.

These patterns when cut out of cardboard, and then out of felt, will be super-imposed on one another to make the actual design. For example: suppose the decoration you are going to put on the pincushion is a simple flower, like a daisy. Each one of the petals would be cut separately from the felt; first, of course, drawing or outlining in chalk from a pattern the petal on the felt. Then each one of these petals—if you are using the paste method—would be pasted to the base. A good idea is to lay the cut out petals on the base (in this case it is the top of the pincushion) and move them around until you discover the most pleasing arrangement. A few strokes of the chalk will show where they are to be placed when you paste them one by one to the top.

In your first simple design you might not want the leaves of the flower to touch the petals, but only to lie between them, in a sort of impressionistic pattern. In that case the leaves are cut from colored felt in exactly the same manner as the petals and attached to the top in the same way. Other pieces of colored felt, cut in circles or squares, can be pasted to the corners of the cushion cover. In this, as in most any other kind of handcraft, you can exercise your imagination to any degree. When you have the cover design just as you want it, the top and bottom of the pincushion can be sewed together, closing only three sides. Into the open side stuff enough cotton so that the cushion has shape and is firm. Then sew shut the fourth side. The result is a gay, useful gift or article that can be sold.

"Once you have made a few simple things," Betty insists, "you'll find that your imagination will begin to soar, and you soon will be making objects out of felt that not only will surprise your friends, but will even amaze you yourself!

"Take pincushions," she explains, holding up one in the shape of a dancer's leg. "There is nothing else you can make in such variety as these. You can make pincushions that look like fruit, or heads, or flowers. And they are all made in the same way. The only difference is in their shape and in the way they are decorated."

ON THE subject of designs Betty really gets enthusiastic. "Designs are all around you!" she asserted recently. "They're in flowers, in trees, in the animals and people you see every day. Also, you can obtain designs—and patterns for designs—from the many women's magazines. Their embroidery designs are what I send for to use with felt, although once in a while they will run a pattern to be used, exclusively for felt working.

"But the real treasure houses of designs are the flower and seed catalogues. Just look at these pictures!" She picked up a flower catalogue and opened it at random. "Did you ever see such colors? Or patterns? Of course it would be almost impossible to copy exactly these beautiful pictures in felt. But the basic ideas can be used."

What she meant was, that, by using tracing paper, the over-all design of the flower—the petals and the leaves—could be copied. Then they could be traced on cardboard and cut out for patterns. The leaves and petals from the same flower need not be used. With the aid of your imagination strange and exotic flowers can be made by using petals and leaves from various blooms.

"I have boxes of leaf patterns," Betty told me. "And boxes of petal and stem patterns. Whenever I go for a walk, or if the family goes somewhere on a trip, I keep my eyes open for anything I can use for a pattern. I bring home odd leaves and plants. Then I trace them on cardboard and cut them out for my pattern boxes. When I need a flower for a design, I simply select from my patterns the type of leaf, petal and stem I want, and then arrange them in any way I wish."

No attempt is made, she explained, to get every detail. If the over-all design is captured in a pattern and cut out of felt, then some of the detail—as much or as little as you want—can be put in by use of colored thread. Most of Betty's designs for her large pieces, like sweaters, are obtained this way. Also with various bits of cardboard she will experiment by the hour to work out intricate symbols to be used as decorations for borders or for belts.

ON THE subject of belts Betty practically goes into raptures.

"They're what I like to do best of all," she says. "I don't know of any woman or girl who can't use an extra belt, especially now that full skirts and blouses are being worn more. Another thing, even though they can be made so easily and in so many different designs, I never have enough of them in my shop."

Almost all of Betty's belts are made entirely out of felt. That is, not only the designs decorating it, but the belt itself is of felt. Some of the designs she uses on the beautiful belts she makes and sells are Pennsylvania Dutch barn symbols, insignia of the armed forces, flowers, and ordinary embroidery designs, worked with embroidery thread. Another reason Betty likes to make belts is because she loves to shop for the various clasps she uses on them. She finds most of them in the five and ten cents stores; odd buckles, hook-and-eye sets, pins, and anything else she can find to hold the ends together. Sometimes she attaches braided leather thongs or strings of felt to the ends of the belt to be tied.

"I'll never forget the first two belts I made," Betty recalls, laughing. "One was decorated with a series of Tyrolese peasant designs, and the other with a row of bright flowers. I was spending a few days at a resort in the Pocono mountains, and the first day I was there I put on the peasant belt, with a white blouse, and full swinging skirt, and strolled toward the lake.

"I hadn't gone a hundred yards when a dark-haired girl who was passing me hesitated and glanced at my belt.

"'What a pretty belt!' she said, and stopped beside me.

"'I made it myself," I told her, smiling.

"She was so obviously attracted by it that I unhooked it and showed her how it was made. We talked for a few moments and then she called to a group of girls who were sitting on the grass watching a tennis game.

"The girls came running, and in a few seconds the belt was being passed from hand to hand.

"'You make these to sell, don't you?' the dark-haired girl asked. I had told her that I had a gift shop in which all the things were handmade.

"For a moment I didn't quite know what to say. It was true that I made a great many things for sale, but I was on a vacation, and besides this was one of the first belts I had made. Also, the fact that I liked the belt myself made me hesitate.

"'I'll be making more of these,' I said at last. 'And they will certainly be for sale—.'

"'Then I'll buy this one,' she interrupted me immediately. 'How much is it?'

"Before I could say anything, a small blonde girl who was in the group spoke up:

"'You have so many belts, Ruth,' she said. 'This belt will go perfectly with that peasant hat I brought along.'

"But there was no arguing with the dark-haired girl. I made things to sell, I had made this belt, and therefore she would buy it. Neither the little blonde nor I had a chance.

"The result was that I sold her the belt for $5. But that isn't the end of the story.

"Being beltless, I went back to the hotel and put on the other belt, the one with the flower design. Once more I started toward the lake. Inside of two hours the little blonde had managed to buy that belt from me. Later in the day I saw her starting out with a group for a walk. On her pert little head was a gay peasant hat, and around her waist was the peasant belt!

"'I traded with Ruth!' she called as she waved a hand to me and started down the path with her friends."

BETTY USES embroidery designs and patterns—worked w1th embroidery thread like any other piece of embroidery—to decorate many of her items besides belts. For example, one of the most beautiful and saleable items she makes is a collar and cuff set. One of the pretties of these sets is made out of white felt, with a colorful design embroidered on it. She obtains these designs and patterns for embroidery from any and all of the women's magazines; she is also a constant visitor to the art departments of stores in the larger cities.

One of the largest projects in felt, Betty claims, is to decorate a sweater. It is more work because usually the design is larger and more intricate. Betty buys plain sweaters and then appliques to one the various designs she has made for it. Sometimes, when a large floral decoration is used, it will consist of several independent designs, all superimposed on the others and overlapping. The effect, of course, is beautiful, and looks as if the decoration is in three dimensions.

"But there is so much demand for my smaller felt things," Betty told me, "that I can only make about one sweater in two weeks, and sometimes only one a month." She held up a lovely pair of felt slippers. "Now these seem to be difficult—more difficult to make than sweaters—but they're really quite easy."

The felt slippers really interested me, and so I asked Betty to take it slowly and to explain, step by step, how they were made. This is what she told me:

The first thing, after you have selected the color of felt you are going to use, is to place your foot on the felt and stand on it. Be sure to stand, don't sit. Because when you stand your foot flattens out and the size will be correct. Draw an outline of your foot (just a little larger than your foot) on the felt with chalk. Cut two pieces of felt for each foot. Now cut an innersole, or a heavy piece of cardboard, about a quarter of an inch all around smaller than the felt you have cut to the shape of your foot. Place this piece of cardboard between the two pieces of felt (for the same foot) and sew around the edges with a contrasting colored wool yarn. Now cut a pattern on cardboard for the piece to go over the instep. Here you can exercise your imagination a little and experiment with different shapes. Then transfer this pattern to felt, cut it out, and sew it to the sole of the slipper. The slipper is now made, and the only thing left is to decorate it. Betty often decorates slippers with a flower made of felt and tiny beads.

"I'd like to tell you how the first pair of slippers I made was sold," Betty said. "I had made only one pair—it was a kind of experiment—and they were so soft and comfortable that I wore them quite often. In fact, I kept them in the shop upstairs, and when I was alone I'd slip out of my regular shoes and put on the slippers. When any customers came in I'd take off the slippers, stuff them under the desk, and put on the shoes.

"One day a very aristocratic young woman and her father came into the hotel. I was busy doing something, so I suggested that they go up to the shop and browse around. I had noticed that the girl was quite stylishly dressed. She was a tall girl and of course her feet were proportionately large. What attracted my attention was that she seemed to be wearing (for appearances sake) shoes several sizes too small. They were up in the shop a little while, in fact I had just about forgotten them, when I saw the young lady come down the steps. What amazed me was that she was carrying her shoes and was wearing my felt slippers!

"I stood, open-mouthed, watching her. I had never dreamed that anyone would think the slippers, shoved under the desk, were for sale.

"'Daddy will pay you for them,' she said calmly as she passed me and went out to their car."

HOW ABOUT prices for the felt things? It all depends, of course, on the amount of felt and the time involved in making them. Simple things like pincushions will be priced at from $2 to $5. Belts start at $5 and go to $10 depending on the work, type of clasp, and complexity of design.

Slippers, unless a great deal of work has been put on them, are $5. Sweaters are sold from $10 to $50. The price, of course, depends not only on the work involved, but also on the cost of the original sweater. Betty always buys the best sweaters because, as she says, "Why spend time putting a design on a sweater that cost only a few dollars to begin with?"

Of course all the items Betty makes are sold in her gift shop at Cherryville. But other people, to whom she has taught felt working bring their finished things to her to be displayed and sold. The arrangement she makes with these people is the same as that made with any other handcraft workers who bring their output to her shop. That is, when the item is sold Betty keeps one-third and two-thirds goes to the maker.

Anyone who, with some practice, begins to make clever things out of felt, or who puts designs of felt on other things, will find a ready market for them," Betty says. "The simplest way to sell your articles is to take some of your best things to any gift shop in your locality. Remember, every owner or manager of a gift shop is constantly searching for items that will appeal to his customers. The gift shop business is built on the idea of having a great many new, interesting and colorful gifts on display. And because the gift shop operator doesn't usually buy these articles outright, but keeps them on consignment—that is, he or she pays for them when they are sold—the more items in the shop the more chance there is to make a sale to customers when they come in to browse around. Here is a word of advice from someone actually in the business. Never be shy about showing your work to gift shops—they are just as eager to have them as you are to sell them.

"Remember, too, no matter how beautiful the item is that you have made, it won't be sold unless someone sees it. If you don't expect to make enough things to warrant putting them in a shop, you'll be surprised how many sales you'll make simply by wearing them yourself. The anecdotes I told you about belts and the slippers concern only a few of the times I have sold things in an odd way. Many a time I've had someone admire a bag I was carrying or a hat I was wearing, and have them offer to buy it on the spot. I used to make many sets of felt earrings, and I think every time I wore a set I sold it. I remember selling a set in a restaurant, When I was paying the bill the cashier admired the pair I had on. Bingo! Another sale was made! You know, that's how some of our famous women hat designers make many of their sales. They wear their hats, and when someone likes them, they sell them right off their heads! Well, I've sold my felt earrings right out of my ears!"